


Here Be Dragons

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2010 [2]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, M/M, Mild Gore, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:21:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little girl, meet what lives under your bed. </p><p>(A collection of stand alone ficlets in the same universe.)</p><p>--> Now with added, previously missing chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These were all written out of order and have now been sorted chronologically. That means, yes, the last ficlet is the first, originally. 
> 
> Amusewithaview betaed all of them and is to blame for half of them. So.

.

**There Are Wolves**

.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Roque spits through comms shortly before a burst of gunfire interrupts his stream of curses. A scream of rage is followed by more rattling and Clay would worry, except he’s got his own goons to shoot. They’re big and well armed and there’s a whole lot more of them than there are supposed to be.

He ducks, rolls, changes the clip of his gun as fast as he can and hollers, “Andrews! Cane! Report!”

There’s no answer and not even gunfire anymore. Somewhere, the fight is already over. “Roque!”

“We are so fucked, Clay!” is his answer, followed by, “Would you die already, motherfucker?!” and, “I’m almost out!”

Clay closes his eyes, counts to three, and keeps shooting through it. He doesn’t need his eyes. He can smell the enemy, feel them, almost taste them. Taste their blood on his tongue, hot and sweet. He wants to taste it.

Instead he barks the names of his team once more, hopes for any response. Any at all. He’ll take someone gloating over comms that they’re caught. Caught can be freed. Dead can’t be undone. 

There’s no answer, except from Roque, who yells incoherently in rage and then announces that he’s down to knives and then…

Then he’s just down.

A single scream, wet and pain-filled, a gurgle. Clay can still hear him breathing, but it’s a stuttering, precarious thing. 

Fuck this. 

He empties his last clip, flips the grip on his gun, and throws it. It hits one of the guards they’re fighting in the face, shoves his nose into his brain with a crunch, a wet sound, a fine spray of blood like red mist. The guy goes down and Clay allows himself a single smirk as he steps away from his flimsy cover, arms spread at his side.

The idiots stop shooting, thinking they’ve won and Clay just keeps walking and walking, feeling his gums itch and his jaw stretch uncomfortably to make room for bigger teeth. (The better to rip you the fuck apart with, my dear.)

There’s six of them. Two to his left, two on his right. One in front, one a bit behind that one, checking on his newly dead buddy, gun lowered. Rookie move.

They call for him to stop, guns trained on him. He smirks. These bullets are not silver and Clay will not die here. He licks his lips, tastes his own blood, runs his tongue over teeth that are too white, too sharp. Hungry. Clay will not die here.

These men on the other hand… these men killed his team. 

The first one is only fifteen feet away when a warning shot comes from his right, along with a scream, panic. The bullet grazes his arm and he flinches out of reflex, nothing more. Still walking. Ten feet. 

The man screams for him to stop, stop or he’ll fucking shoot, the other one is still alive, they don’t need him. They don’t need him a live and _what the fuck_?! His eyes have changed, flat and yellow, his sight shifted. He smells their fear and likes it, likes how the stench grows stronger as they understand, begin to see. In his ear, Roque fights to breathe with a lung filling with blood. For that, they will all die here.

Clay lowers his arms to his side, bends in the knees and lunges.

The first man goes down with his throat torn out before he knows what’s happening. The one kneeling with his friend is next and his gun takes down the two on the left-hand side before Clay abandons the weapon and his living (dead) shield and lunges for the remaining two. They scatter, smarter than the others, and try to catch him in a pincer move but he the smell of their fear is sharp, acidic, outright panic now, _what’s going on, what the fuck, what_ is _he_?

Wolf.

He’s a wolf and they just slaughtered his pack. 

His fingers curl and twist, nails sharpening, lengthening, and he feels a ripple of fur along his spine. The wolf is close, so close, and they howl in unison for their fallen comrades. 

They howl and kill with their bare hands (claws), kill quickly and messily, and they taste their enemies' blood, hot and sweet.

They let the bodies fall where they may as they rip out of the courtyard and into a hallway, following the faint trail of the familiar. Cane is riddled with bullets, his expression frozen in anger rather than fear. They step around instead of over him.

Movement to the left. A half-dead guard, wheezing for breath, trying to be quiet. It doesn’t save him. Dead, dead. Unmourned.

Andrews is further down the hall, spread-eagle and bloody. His eyes are closed. Roque still breathes, still lives. He stopped cursing, though, words eluding him.

A shot comes out of nowhere, catching them in the shoulder. They howl and rear back, crouching low and moving fast. A blur, a swipe of claws, another one down. 

Roque is lying on a pile of bodies, grinning with blood on his teeth, knife in one hand, clutching his torn stomach with the other. Literally holding his insides in. He stinks of blood, death and sickness and there is nothing sweet about it. Not from him, not from pack.

He makes a sound that sounds like their name and the wolf recedes, leaving Clay thinking in the singular again. Leaving him _thinking_. He clutches his dying friend’s hand in his, squeezes. The knife clatters to the ground. Loudly. His claws prick holes into Roque’s skin and he frowns, looks down at their hands. He should be calling Clay a pussy for holding his hand like a girl, but he can’t talk anymore.

He just twists his hand until he can see Clay’s, dark and furred, nails like knives. Deadly. Alien. _Wolf_.

He knew, has known for years, but Clay’s never shown him. Roque’s seen the scars on his chest and back, but never the thing that was born from them. 

His grin grows wider, satisfied and fascinated until a cough tears from his lips, blood and spittle flying. Almost gone. “Roque,” Clay says. The word sounds loud in the quiet building. Only the two of them now.

Soon, only one.

Roque shakes his head, squeezes Clay’s hand and then tugs on it. After a moment he understands, raises it himself to lie on his friend’s chest. Roque grunts, frowns. 

Not right then. He twists Clay’s fingers, tries to talk, doesn’t manage. Finally he manages to point one of Clay’s claws at his chest and the older man finally understands.

He doesn’t pull back, doesn’t scream _no_ like he wants to. He didn’t choose to become this and he’s never inflicted it on anyone else, not in twenty years. But Roque… Roque is dying and still fighting, still grinning.

Clay closes his eyes, inhales blood and death and pack. 

_Real_ pack. To have someone...

He’s selfish in the end, or selfless. All the same.

He doesn’t ask if the other man is sure, doesn’t insult him that way. Instead he bends to press a kiss to Roque’s temple. He licks his lips, tastes sweat and mortality. Humanity.

He’s going to miss that. Then he curls both hands into claws and rams them home. 

“See you on the other side,” he whispers.

Roque gasps and laughs.

.

.


	2. White Noise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Why talk so much_? - Jensen, Cougar, a human and ninjas. Don't ask where the ninjas came from.

.

**White Noise**

.

Cougar sits in the far corner of the room, the parts of his rifle spread out on the upside-down crate in front of him. In his line of sight are the door, the only window of the crappy room he calls home for this mission, and both of its other occupants. 

His hands smooth along the metal of his rifle, the rag smelling of gun-oil and sweat. It stings his nose and calms his nerves at the same time. He needs this, needs something to focus on other than the silent war happening between Jensen and their latest handler. 

Jensen is set up on the only real table, right in front of the window. He’s typing away at one of his laptops with one hand, playing with a rubber ball with the other. He squeezes it, drops it to the floor, catches it again, rolls it between his fingers, throws it in the air. It’s an endless rhythm, up, down, around, again.

After three months with the younger man, Cougar knows he will keep the routine up for hours on end, never deviating. He has come to expect it as much as he expects Jensen’s babbling. The white noise has actually begun to soothe him. It’s not like he needs his hearing to detect danger. Not when all his other senses more than make up for it.

So he lets Jensen do as he pleases, only silently wondering why. Why the toys? Why all those words?

Henderson, their handler, on the other hand, has no tolerance for the hacker’s games. He is a ball of tightly coiled anger and nerves sitting at the foot of one of the beds, glaring. 

They have a new handler for every mission and a new mission every week. Cougar knows how the military works, knows the only reason he and the hacker haven’t been disappeared yet for causing too much trouble is that they’re damn good. No-one hacks like Jensen and no-one shoots like Cougar and together… oh, together. When they told Cougar he would work with another, he assumed the man would end up dead like all the others that couldn’t keep up with him.

When he met Jensen and smelled the cat in him, saw it slink around his ankles, he thought they might not survive even this one mission with each other. But to his endless surprise, they work. They work well. Bird and cat, natural enemies. Somehow Cougar’s iron control and Jensen’s capacity to not appear as a threat make it possible for them to still be here, together, three months later, and, in Jensen’s words, _kicking ass_.

Cougar has never worked with anyone for longer than a month.

He is starting to trust the other shifter. It feels strange. The bird caws and feathers tickle his insides. It makes him restless, this quiet voice telling him it’s okay to relax around the blond. It’s never okay to relax. Never.

“Jensen!” Henderson finally barks, his patience used up. He stinks of anger and fear, sharp and acidic. He knows that, out of the three of them, he is the only one that can be replaced. Knows that others like him _have_ been replaced, a dozen times over in the past few months. “Stop fucking around, soldier, and do your fucking job!!!”

He stands abruptly, ripping the brightly colored ball out of Jensen’s hand, throwing it against the wall with all his human strength. It bounces off, almost hitting Jensen in the face. His hand shoots out at the last possible moment, catching the ball half an inch from his glasses.

Stillness. Cougar puts down the scope in his hands and waits.

Henderson is utterly frozen, staring at the hacker he just yelled at. His fear rolls through the room, a wave of sweat and piss, followed closely by hunger and rage, the animal desire to pounce and tear. At his feet, Jensen’s shadow coils tightly, getting ready to spring, to burst out of his skin.

Then the blonde takes a deep breath, lowers his hand and starts talking. “Wow, did you see that? That was totally badass. I mean, did you see me, with the ninja super catching skills, except, I’m actually kind of sure ninjas don’t get attacked by rogue balls all that often, unless it’s some kind of super secret weapon because, like, if they aren’t trained to fight them, then they’d be the ultimate weapon, right? So you throw a ball at a ninja and he just…drops. Do ninjas drop? Or do they land silently and gracefully, even in unconsciousness? I always figured those bastards wouldn’t know how to make a sound if you poked them with a needle, kind of like my friend Cougar over there, right Cougs?”

The hunger recedes, the fear follows, the moment passes. Henderson straightens, runs a hand over the front of his sweat-soaked shirt. “Stop babbling and do your fucking job. With both hands, this time. I’m going for dinner.”

Jensen salutes and dutifully puts down the ball. Henderson slams out of the room with a bang, completely ignoring the sniper in the corner. They both listen until his footsteps disappear into the busy crowd on the street below.

Then Jensen picks the ball up again and resumes his game, typing with his other hand, fingers moving unnaturally fast. Twice as fast as before. Cougar frowns as he finishes with his rifle, putting it down to lean against his knee.

Jensen, sensing his look, smiles widely at him. “Dude,” he says. His accent is broad and very American. Sometimes it grates on Cougar, how utterly _mundane_ the other man can appear. “Don’t gimme that look. I’m not gonna play human when the idiot’s not around. Plus, like this, I get the job done in right… about… now.”

He hits the enter key with gusto and spins once in the old office chair he acquired from somewhere, hands in the air. He throws the ball at Cougar, who catches it with the same swiftness and accuracy the hacker displayed moments ago. He keeps the ball and Jensen pouts before standing and throwing himself across the bed, head dangling over the edge. He looks at Cougar upside down, grinning stupidly.

And Cougar finds himself squeezing the silly toy and asking, “Why talk so much?”

He has wondered for a while, but seeing the hacker’s mouth run off at Henderson just now was enough to push the question into words. Cats are silent and graceful. Most of the time, Jensen is neither.

He frowns at the sniper, upside down, glasses slipping toward his forehead. He pushes them back into place with one finger, yawns. If he were in cat form, he would be washing himself. Obviously, the question is too personal. 

But then he frowns, closes his eyes and says, “I tell you, I get a favor from you.”

Cougar considers, rolls the ball between his hands once and then lays it down in his lap. Jensen will not ask something too outrageous. “Si,” he agrees.

Jensen smiles and lays his hands on his chest, scratching at the taut material of his lurid shirt. “You’re a born, aren’t you?” he asks.

Cougar nods. 

“Well, I’m not.”

Surprise. 

In the months he has known the hacker, Cougar has never witnessed the things that typically identify a non-born shifter. Jensen’s control is perfect, his shift smooth and as painless as it can be. He keeps his mind in his other form and has full access to his cat’s superior abilities in his human body. Cougar simply assumed the man was like him, born with the other already inside him.

“I know,” Jensen continues, “I’m awesome. But I’ve had a long time to practice.”

His customary smile fades, replaced by something darker, something Cougar never suspected the man to be capable off until the first time a mission went wrong. 

“I was eight,” the blond says, staring at the ceiling. “My mom’s boyfriend lost it. Killed her, then went for Janie. I jumped between them.”

From his silence, Cougar can surmise the rest. An eight-year-old against an angry, fully grown shifter. It is a miracle Jensen is alive today. The hacker snorts. “Wouldn’t have made it, if Janie hadn’t gone for mom’s gun. She emptied the whole clip into him.”

He sounds proud.

“Afterwards, in the foster homes, I needed to learn control fast. So I started talking, talking, talking.”

Too personal. Cougar wants to withdraw his question because to know the answer is to know Jensen and he does not get close to others. Birds of prey fly alone, not in flocks. And Jensen is not even winged. And yet, he doesn’t. He wants to know. Wants to know how a child coped with having a fully grown predator in his head.

Cougar’s other self grew with him, year for year, day for day. Non-born do not have that luxury. What invades them along with teeth and claws is always fully grown, always hungry.

“It was…,” Jensen stops, suddenly, interrupts his own story, breaks off. “It’s habit after all these years. The noise keeps the cat down.”

Quick and clean. A few sentences to summarize a struggle that must have lasted years. A few words to describe something that Cougar has seen grown men break on. 

He wonders how anyone can look at Jensen and see someone weak, someone malleable when he is so obviously anything but. Jacob Jensen is made of steel and blood.

“So,” he says as he rolls onto his stomach, grinning again, the past packed away again, neatly. Cougar sees a phantom tail twitch, a split second of animal and human bleeding into each other, feels the shadow of wings arch at his back in response. “That favor.”

Cougar waits.

“Full moon in three days. We’ll have lost The Idiot until then. Run with me?”

Cougar considers. They have worked together for three moons, but they have always split at sunset, each going their own way, observing their own rituals. Outside the moon, a shift is a shift. But when the moon is full, there is more to it than simple mechanics. Magic, Cougar’s mother called it. When the moon is full, you keep only those around that you trust.

“What happened to the man who infected you?” 

Because the gun was certainly not loaded with silver and the bullets did not kill the man. 

Jensen, who was bouncing on his bed like an eager kitten, stills. He reaches up to pull his glasses from his face and looks at Cougar with naked, blue eyes. “I caught up with him when I was fifteen,” he says, voice flat.

Cougar nods. “I will fly with you,” he says.

.

.


	3. Bultungin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bultungin_ \- Kanuri language, meaning _I change myself into a hyena_.

.

**Bultungin**

.

Pooch is standing twenty feet from the jeep Roque and the Colonel are busy unloading. He holds his face to the sun, feels it burn through his clothes and into his skin, hot like an actual touch, heavy and real. He inhales and smells sand and dry grass, feels the animal inside him stir and rumble.

This is where they come from, the edge of the great desert, the center of Africa. This is where they were born, where they were worshipped. 

Behind him, Clay is already cursing the heat, hating it. He’s made for cold, wet winters and tall trees, not for scraggly grass and endless sand. Wolf, not hyena.

Pooch really, really doesn’t care.

He’s the newbie of the group, having only been with the two wolves for a bit over four months, but he spent the past five hours driving them to the ass-end of the Saharan desert and he deserves a break. He deserves this.

He remembers his father promising to take him here one day. He was five and believed the man, even though he never had the slightest intention of taking his bastard half-blood son to Africa. Things like that are reserved for full-bloods, for real firstborns.

Pooch is the fifth firstborn of his father’s line and the only one born to a woman who isn’t clan. That was two strikes against him before he was ever born. No-one cares, in their world, if a child is born in wedlock or not. Only the firstborn inherit the gift, so it’s commonplace for men to sire their children on different women, resulting in more than one ‘firstborn’. But usually both parents are clan. One a firstborn, one a second or third-born, with enough animal in them to be more than human, but not enough to ever change. 

Marissa Porteus is one hundred percent human and her son was an accident, the result of a drunken night. She never would have called the man again, never would have asked him for anything, if her newborn son hadn’t suddenly turned into a baby hyena one night when he was barely a month old.

The old man grumbled and rumbled, but he did pay and occasionally, he came by and took Pooch out to run. He died when his youngest was seven and the duty of taking care of him fell to his oldest son, Pooch’s half brother, some twenty years older and with no patience for a pup. 

He was the one that invented ‘Pooch’ and he despised how Linwood ran with the name, making it his own. Making it himself instead of the insult it was meant to be. He enlisted the second he turned eighteen and found Jolene two years later, thirdborn of her family and as eager to get away from clan politics as Pooch himself.

Life became good.

And now here he is, standing at the root of his people, the origin of everything the clans are, knowing that his proud and arrogant brother has never stood here, never seen this. Knowing that his brother would probably laugh at him, Pooch, the soldier, playing third fiddle to two non-borns, who should, by rights and tradition, bow to him. Married to a thirdborn rebel woman, childless still at twenty-eight.

But his brother stopped mattering long ago and right now, right here, under the sun, with his new (last) team at his back and his wedding band on his finger, Pooch knows what home is.

“Hey, Colonel!” he calls without looking away from the sun drenched open plain in front of him. “Ya mind if I go for a run?!”

Roque drops a box of something or other into the dirt, coughs at the sand that rises from the impact and curses under his breath. Even he can’t ruin Pooch’s mood today.

“If you check the perimeter while you’re at it, no.”

Pooch spins enough to salute crisply and then takes off down the slope they’re setting up camp on, one hand on the buttons of his shirt, the other on the fly of his pants. He flings his clothes and boots away until there’s nothing artificial left on him except his wedding band. 

Since they’re not really here, there are no dog tags for this mission. And really, even if they get to keep their tags, they’re usually safely stored away in an old cigar box in Clay’s bunk, where they don’t get lost during a shift. It’s against regs, but then, most of what they are and do is. So there. And the wedding band… Pooch paid a fortune, literally a _fortune_ for the enchantments on his ring. It shifts with him, ring to bracelet, man to hyena, and back. 

He promised Jolene forever and he damn well meant it, too. 

His human trappings a trail behind him, he takes a single deep breath and _leaps_ , changing mid-air and landing on four paws, barely disturbing the sand. He takes off at a dead run, first straight and then looping around in a wide circle. He lets the scents and sights of the dry land sink in, foreign and yet, somehow, deep down, familiar. Pooch may never have been here before, but the hyena was. The hyena knows this ground, this sand, this sun.

He returns to the others an hour later, without having found the first trace of human scent, and barrels straight into Roque’s legs, just because he can. That, and the motherfucker needs to seriously loosen up. He’s been a wolf for over four years, as far as Pooch knows, and that’s long enough to figure some shit out but the man still fights and fights and fights.

All that vibrating he’s doing twenty-four-seven is driving Pooch up the wall. So he rams his head into the SiC’s knees and gets a heavy hand on the scruff of his neck in return, a bellowed curse, a kick to the ribs. Clay, sitting in the shadow of one of the tents they’ve put up, kicks back in his folding chair and laughs.

Pooch yips at him, too, and then goes back to harassing Roque, snapping at his legs and dancing out of reach before he can land a punch or another kick. He laughs as he does it, the high-pitched laugh of a hyena. Humans dislike the sound, he knows, but to him it’s simply an expression of joy. Laughter is laughter and shit doesn’t need to be pretty to be good.

Eventually, when Roque looks like he’s about to pull his Sig (loaded with silver), Clay takes pity on the man and says, “Jesus, Roque, just run with him.”

He waves his right hand vaguely in the direction of the open steppe, cigar smoke curling lazily around the movement before it’s carried away. Roque growls and tries to protest because it still hurts him, the shift, still pains him because he _fights too much_. Pooch tried to tell him, but the other man never listens. 

Fighting yourself when you’re human is not smart. Fighting yourself when there is actually something inside you that fights back is just plain stupid. 

But Roque is Roque and Pooch is sure, even after knowing the man only for months, that Roque has no idea how to _not_ fight. The taller man strips angrily, jerkily, his knives clattering to the ground first, followed by clothes. He snarls at Pooch, naked and angry, a black cut-out against the reddening evening sky. Pooch wants to paint his face and hand him a spear and feels absurdly glad for his four-legged form because if he said out loud what he is thinking, Roque _would_ kill him and his woman would never forgive him for making her a widow after less than a year of marriage. 

Then Roque looks like he’s hesitating again and Pooch cannot allow that, snaps at his thigh and takes off at a dead run. Roque follows, yelling, cursing, angry. It takes more than one leap for him, more than a single thought, takes him half a mile of running and screaming and occasionally stopping and breathing hard, to shift. But then there is a wolf in the Sahara and Pooch throws back his head in the last of the day’s light and laughs, high and tittering and free.

Somewhere, almost out of earshot, Clay calls for them to, “Come the fuck back, or hunt your own damn dinner!”

.

.


	4. and wings to carry me (coda)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cougar ruins a life and Jensen talks too much. Written on request for the prompt _Shifter!Verse, Someone loses control during sex and infects a woman that is not Aisha. Consequences and aftermath._

.

**and wings to carry me**

.

“So, basically,” Jensen summarizes, his expression solemn, shadow tail twitching behind him like a pendulum of neatly suppressed rage, “You went into a random bar, got drunk, picked up a chick, fucked her and then lost control.”

Cougar, who hasn’t met anyone’s gaze since he stumbled in fifteen minutes ago, nods silently. 

“And then you fucking _infected her_.”

Another nod. 

“Jensen man,” Pooch, the eternal peace maker intervenes. “We don’t know if she caught it. We can’t know until the next moon.”

Roque nods in silent agreement and even Clay looks like he’s thinking along the same lines. Jensen clenches his jaws. It’s early and Cougar’s arrival woke him up, so he’s not wearing his glasses. His eyes are blue, blue, blue as he looks at Pooch, blue and cold, “He fucking _bit_ her, Pooch. Ain’t no coming back from that.”

He puts a palm flat against his right collarbone where an almost invisible bite scar rests, one that only Cougar knows about. 

“Still,” Clay says, “Shit happens. None of us have perfect control, even the borns. We gotta deal with this.”

The hacker shakes his head. “Bullshit,” he bites before turning to the sniper. “Her address.”

Cougar rattles it off without hesitation or movement and Jensen nods, spinning on his heel and only stopping to grab Pooch’s car keys on the way out. 

“What’s he-“ Clay starts. 

Roque’s already standing to go after Jensen and lay into him. Cougar’s arm blocking his path stops him. He looks up, for the first time, eyes dark under the brim of his hat. “Let him go,” he orders.

“What? No! He’s acting like a shit!”

The sniper shakes his head, repeats, “Let him go.”

He’s the only one that knows where Jensen got the scar on his collarbone, the slashes on his side and chest. He’s the only one that knows that Jensen’s mother died because her boyfriend got drunk and then got angry. He’s the only one that knows that last night he repeated history and the only thing saving him from Jensen aiming a gun between his eyes is that fact that Victoria Marquez is still alive, unlike Jocelyn Jensen. 

“It’s gonna be okay, man, you’ll see,” Pooch tries.

Cougar tips his head lower, crosses his arms over his chest and doesn’t answer. Jensen can forgive everything and anything. Except this. Whatever Cougar gets, he knows, he deserves.

.

The woman who opens the door at the address Cougar rattled off is tiny and pale. She has her arm wrapped around her middle and a bandage over her shoulder, stark white against olive skin.

Jensen looks at the bandage more than at her face as he asks if she’s Victoria. He knows she is. He saw her last night, at the bar. Saw her leave with Cougar. Didn’t worry, not a bit. Cougar always comes back and he never fucks up. Jensen relies on Cougar to never fuck up and not only in the literal sense.

He needs to know he can rely on his friend, needs to know he can trust him, depend on him. He needs… mostly, he just needs Cougar.

“Hey,” she says, drawing his attention from her shoulder to her face. “I recognize you. You were at the bar.” He accent is thick and warm, like molasses. Like Cougar, when he’s laying it on thick.

He nods. 

“You’re a friend of Cougar.”

He shrugs his shoulders, so-so, because right now? Not so much. Cougar just crossed a whole lotta lines and shit, Jensen needs to work through this, okay? He’s… this shit is heavy. Heavy with memory. He’ll get over it, probably far too quickly, but there’s snippets of half-remembered horrors floating around his brain right now, and he just can’t.

“Would you like to come in?” She seems to be dealing a whole lot better than Jensen is. But then, it’s probably not sunk in yet. It took a few days for him, and he was ripped to shreds and healing at breakneck speed. 

Cougar picked her up around midnight, give them an hour to screw… he spent most of the night and early morning explaining. She’s only had a few hours to try and wrap her mind around the fact that, come full moon, she’s going to grow feathers and something inside of her that’s going to set up shop in her headspace and never go away.

.

Her place is cute in a college student kind of way. Jensen has never been one of those, but he’s banged enough to know. His track record isn’t nearly as bad as Cougar makes it look, you know.

She offers him coffee, but he only wants water. Caffeine isn’t going to make this conversation any easier. Not that he knows what that conversation is going to be, exactly, mind you, but he knows that he needs to have it. He needs to try and fix what he already knows can’t be mended. He owes that to Victoria, to his mom, and probably himself, too. It’s not like he doesn’t know he has fucking issues.

And then they’re sitting across from each other and he can’t look around and ignore her for any longer without seeming very, very out of it. Which he is. He even forgot his damn glasses at the safehouse.

“How are you holding up?” he asks, finally.

She shrugs then nods to herself, holding on to her mug of coffee. At second glance, she still looks pale as hell, but not quite as wrung out as he thought she would. Should. “I’m fine.”

He looks at her incredulously. “Fine,” he quotes. “Fucked up, insane, neurotic…”

She laughs. “I know. But really, I am fine. I am a second generation second born.”

He gapes. No, really, he gapes like an idiot because this chick… she’s the human born child of a human born child of a shifter. She’s still got a few drops of the blood in her. Enough, one would think, to recognize a fucking shifter when she sees one and run the other way. Goddamn, don’t they teach second borns who and what not to fuck with these days? He’s a non-born and he learned those lessons.

“You know,” he blurts, then corrects himself, “You _knew_. When you went with him.”

“That he was a bird? Yes. I saw his shadow. I also see yours, gato.”

He cringes then, because that’s what Cougs calls him, sometimes.

“So you’re what? Okay with this? He ruined your life.”

She shakes her head, puts down her mug and scoots forward on the sofa. “No. He saved it. I have cancer, gato. Can you smell it yet?”

He sniffs the air automatically, almost before her words register. By the time they do, she’s already talking again. “My clan can’t smell it either. Yet. But it’s there and my mother… it killed her, the cancer. I will not end like that. I asked them to turn me, but there were accidents, lately. A few people died. They said they will not risk it, not while I have a chance. But I know how it ends. I have seen it. I will… I would have died, without your friend.”

It’s right about then he smells the shame on her and he looks up from his glass sharply, frowning. “You planned this.”

“Si.”

“You… did you slip him something?” He’s standing, tall, angry. The cat’s hissing and spitting at this… this human, forcing Cougar to do her will, her bidding. Forcing him to betray himself like that… to… She cringes away from him and that is answer enough.

She needed a tool, and Cougar was probably the closest she could come to the species of her own clan in this small nest in the middle of nowhere. So she used him. Ticket to living longer and staying healthy. Fuck a shifter, drug him up, let him rip you open.

Jensen, who remembers his mother’s dying scream, her blood hot on his face, claws and fangs in his body, tearing, rending, Jensen, who was eight years old and sure he would die on that kitchen floor, that exact same Jensen, is disgusted.

With Victoria. With himself, for believing the worst of Cougar. 

But mostly with her. How could she… she was _human_. And she threw it away. Like it didn’t matter, like it wasn’t worth anything, to be able to sleep through a full moon, to live without violence, without fighting. 

He stomps out of her cute little college apartment, out of her building, down the street to the car. He climbs in and is about to floor it back to the safehouse, when a shadow detaches from a nearby wall, becoming a man and a hat. 

“Jensen,” Cougar says, stepping up to the car.

Jensen closes his eyes, bangs his head against the back of the seat. “You heard?”

Of course he heard. He stood no more than fifty feet from the open window. No distance at all, for them. In a few weeks, no distance at all for Victoria Marquez. 

“Si.”

He doesn’t say anything else and Jensen leans over, unlocks the passenger side door of the shitty jeep Pooch ‘acquired’. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells Cougar when he slips into the car.

“Nothing to apologize for.”

“I ripped into you for no reason.”

The sniper points at Victoria’s house. Reason enough, he says wordlessly. Jensen shakes his head as he starts the engine. He needs to get away from this place before he stops being reasonable and goes back in there to rip that woman to shreds. Out of anger, out of frustration. Out of grief, maybe. Why would anyone choose this life?

He’s not suicidal, never has been. But sometimes, when the shit is up to his chin, he wonders if dying on the kitchen floor would have been such a bad alternative. He’s okay now, with Cougs and the others. He’s fine. 

But to be human…

He’s so, so angry at Victoria, for throwing that away. 

Cougar’s hand is on his chin suddenly, before he can pull out onto the street, his fingers pulling Jensen’s head around. 

“Hey,” he says. And then again, because sometimes Jensen needs to be told twice. “Hey.”

He nods. Takes a deep breath. Releases. “Are the others pissed?”

Cougar lets go of his chin and he kicks the car into gear. “Maybe,” he allows.

“I should probably tell them why I blew up, right?”

He doesn’t want to. No, really. Shit, he and Cougs have been with them for a year, and they still think he’s a born. They don’t know Jensen hasn’t always been Jensen.

“Si.”

He looks over at his friend at the dry confirmation and finds him with his hat pulled low over his face. He’s not over it. Cougar will blame himself for Victoria, no matter that Victoria is to be blamed for Victoria. And Jensen will replay his mother’s (his own) murder in his sleep for the next few weeks and neither of them will go to a bar anytime soon.

“Lo siento,” he repeats, staring fixedly at the road. Because he can. Because he wants to. Because someone has to. 

“Idiota,” Cougar returns.

There’s silence for the rest of the drive.

.

.


	5. Here Be Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little girl, meet what lives under your bed. The original ficlet.

.

**Here Be Dragons**

.

She trails them to the cemetery, watches as they slowly gather. Clay first, followed by a big, angry man, black as midnight. He’s dangerous, she can tell, even from a distance.

Then comes another, shorter guy. He’s all smiles and jokes, big gestures. She isn’t stupid enough to dismiss any black ops soldier, but among the present, he is not the one she worries about. The last two have caught rides from two women, scantily clad and smiling widely. The one with the hat kisses them both and the entire team jeers. She can’t quite put her finger on that one, resolves to watch him.

The last one. Pink shirt, glasses. Loud, American in the worst way. The weak link she has been looking for, the baby of the team. Point a gun at him, she thinks… Point a gun at him, and the others will do as she says. As long as she doesn’t pull the trigger, they’ll follow her orders. A tight rope act, but one she’ll manage. This isn’t her first rodeo.

She hangs back as they move between the graves, scattered but still unified, still a unit. The fact that they converge on high ground is not lost on her. The two black men stand to each side of their leader, enough room between them to maneuver, facing in different directions. The one with the hat jumps, smooth and agile, perching on a tombstone in a crouch. A gargoyle. His gaze scans behind Clay’s back. The last one, the kid, sits at the feet of the one with the hat, curled up, languid and twisted up. In a fight, he’d be the first one dead because he’d be the last one to stand, to draw a gun.

They form a perfect circle, the five of them, covering all directions. No blind spots. There’s no surprise on their faces when she shows herself and boldly steps into their middle. She walks the perimeter of the space between them once, more or less steps over the kid – Jensen, his name is Jensen. The others are Pooch and Roque and Cougar – who doesn’t really match his name because there’s something colder, more remote about him, something distinctly not feline. She comes to a halt next to Clay.

She offers the file and her words, nice promises. Getting home. Getting Max. Getting peace. She throws in how it’s an impossible job, how no-one could do it, really. They’ll bite. She grew up around men like these. They can never back down from a challenge. 

She finishes her spiel and stands, hip cocked, waiting. Clay pulls off his sunglasses, finally, hooks them into his dress shirt. For a moment, a split second, his eyes seem to catch the rising sunlight, flat and shiny. She shrugs it off. Aisha is too old to believe in fairy tales and no matter what is whispered about these men, they are only human.

“What do you think, Losers?” The Colonel asks and she bites back a snort of derision. The Losers? Really?

Pooch and Roque shift, Cougar tips his hat back an inch for better vision, leaves his arms dangling on either side of his legs, watchful, ready to lunge. It’s Jensen, still curled up with his arms around his legs, who answers. “It’s not really what I’m _thinking_ , exactly. It’s more what I’m _smelling_.”

Roque gives a bark of laughter, short and sharp. Clay grins, an edge to his expression. Aisha thinks, for the first time, that there is something more going on here. Something beyond the surface.

Then Jensen rolls to his feet, so smooth, so fast, she barely sees it. He comes to a stop in front of her, dangerously close, his expression still as easy, as open, as before. He bends close and she fights not to back away as he whispers, loud enough for all to hear, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

She jerks away from him and Roque laughs again. It sounds like the baying of a dog, amused and dangerous.

“The question,” Pooch says, too close suddenly, closer than before, “Is which part is the lie.”

She spins to face him, finds him with his head cocked to one side, eyes half-lidded, inhaling deeply. Scenting her. She looks for an opening, looks around her. Roque is closer, too, less than arm’s length away, his tall frame taller, _more_ than a second ago.

Cougar still perches where she last saw him, but his gaze is fixed on her, a thousand yard stare. She’s not imagining the yellow in it, the reptile hunger.

She heard stories about these men. Everyone in their small world has. Stories about their rotten luck, about how they always pull through. Impossible to kill, a man in Afghanistan said. More than human, some backwater warlord whispered after too much booze. Animals in human skin, the stories say. Whispers only, lucky men turned to legend, turned to something that _cannot_ be defeated. It’s the work of cowards, the work of the true losers. People too afraid to admit they’re weak. That they lost to a rag tag group of only five men.

Only stories.

But…

There was a bruja in Aisha’s family tree, two generations back. Aisha has none of her talents and little of her blood but if she concentrates, if she tries hard enough, she can see through lies. See to the core of things. She pulls at that part of her now, drags it out, and looks away from amused faces, too close, too close. Looks at the ground. Looks at their shadows, dancing at their feet in a wind that isn’t there.

They flicker and change. They move. There’s something big and lanky curling under Jensen’s feet, something compact and sleek twining around Roque and Pooch’s legs, sitting at Clay’s haunches.

A cat, the smooth movements, the way Jensen rolled to his feet. A big cat. And the others, canines. Pooch is different from the other, something smaller. Coyote? Hyena? Clay and Roque, tall and solid. Wolves. She looks at Cougar, his shadow in front of him, wings and a beak, straining against the human shell, towards her. To claw out her eyes, she thinks, with that remoteness, that laser sharp focus.

Animals in human skin. A unit made of monsters. Ridiculous.

Only stories.

She feels panic well in her, feels fear, feels the blind, animal terror of small prey caught between big predators. She understands now, that she underestimated these men. Only they’re not men at all, are they?

Changer. Walker. _Shifter_. 

And all the stories are true.

She turns to Clay, in the end, because all her research says he’s the one who’s a sucker for a pretty girl. She doesn’t need to make her eyes wide because they already are.

To her left, Roque draws air audibly, a great gulp of it. “Smells like fear,” he hisspers. Cougar makes a sound, half human laugh, half bird cry.

She meets Clay’s gaze, finds him smiling, all teeth, sharp and white and so, so deadly.

Roque, Jensen and Pooch box her in and Cougar is their sentinel. Clay bends down, close enough for her to feel his hot breath on her face, close enough to smell a hint of fur and dirt, of woods that have never grown on this continent.

He says, voice rough with the wolf under his skin, “Let’s try this again. And this time? No lies.”

.

.


	6. Chains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I apparently forgot to post this chapter. Huh. 
> 
> _Wolves don't do well in cages._

+

**Chains**

+

Wolves are not made for cages.

Wolves are not made for prison cells.

Wolves are not made for being trapped.

Roque has been all of the above for the past five days. 

He stopped thinking in the singular at the end of day one. The wolf tried to take over, to muscle in and howl his rage into the world, throw himself bodily against the bars. To rend something until it’s nothing but meat.

Pooch has been shifting in and out, slipping from one shape to the other like water, the fucker. They don’t like him showing off, don’t like being shown up by one ranking below them in the pack. It makes their skin itch.

Clay has been talking to them in a low murmur for days, calming them down, keeping them grounded. Keeping them in skin, not fur. 

Slowly, that, too, is losing its effect. Soon, wolf will rip through. Soon, wolf will be free. Soon, none will be safe.

“Roque,” Clay snaps, a flash of teeth and dominance, “Keep it the fuck together, soldier. Shifting now is not going to help. Think of the pain,” he orders, alpha in the timbre of his voice. “Think of the toll.”

The toll. Pain. Agony. Crippling exhaustion. Roque’s shift is not smooth like water, it’s a breaking, a tearing, a destroying. Roque changing is like mountains moving. It exhausts them both, man and monster, leaves them empty.

They won’t be able to fight if their captors come back.

The wolf whimpers in remembered pain, pulls back an inch, two, three. Roque exhales, even as he hates himself for his weakness. Being wolf is supposed to make you strong, not weak.

Outside, the sound of large wings flapping echoes through the empty night. They’re on the fifth floor. Nothing _but_ birds visits them here. 

Roque would prefer torture to this room, at this point in time. Roque would prefer anything to this room, at this point. Wolf claws at his own prison of skin and bone, agreeing. 

Yes.

The bird alights on the narrow ledge beyond the bars of their one, tiny, high-set window, wings spread for balance. It’s some sort of eagle, reddish brown. It looks tasty. It looks like something native to the desert, not the motherfucking Brazilian wilderness, full of damn trees and druglords.

The eagle shuffles to one side, then the other, caws once, low and mournful.

“That is not a bird,” Pooch observes, naked and human where, a second ago, he was anything but. Roque is not above glowering at the born.

The eagle caws again, raises one of its clawed feet, presents them with… a cell phone?

It sticks its foot through the bars, releases its burden and hobbles a bit backwards on the ledge. Pooch dives for the phone before Clay can tell him not to. Roque snarls at the bird, feels his alpha’s arm wrap around his neck from behind, like a steel band, just in time to keep him from losing his shit and attacking. Not that he’d get very far, what with them being locked up like puppies in a pound. The bird eyes him, gaze yellow and remote. 

Challenging.

They will bite its head off and _eat it_!

“Uhm, boss?”

“What?”

“There’s a number programmed into that phone. I think someone wants us to call them.”

The eagle makes a sound that somehow conveys scorn, amusement and annoyance at the exact same time. The human side of Roque takes a moment to be impressed. The wolf uses his distraction to seize their mouth and snap their teeth. 

“Do it,” Clay orders, arm tightening around Roque’s neck, forcing him to his knees.

Pooch is already dialing. He holds the phone out in front of him as soon as it starts ringing, knowing everyone will hear. On the second ring, a chipper, male voice answers, its sound grating on Roque’s nerve from the first, fucking syllable.

“Hello and a good day to you, my captured friends. You have reached Jensen’s Escape Hotline, how can I help you?”

“Who the fuck are you?” Clay snarls, releasing Roque to snatch the phone and growl into it.

“Ah, that would be the dulcet tones of Colonel Frank Clay, yes? Corporal Jake Jensen, reporting for mission Get Them Out, sir.”

“Give me your CO,” Clay orders, sharp, no-nonsense. They have been in here for five fucking days.

“Uhm,” the kid says, then pauses. “Yeah. See, it’s a bit like this, officially, you were declared dead when your transpo blew a week ago. But me and my buddy, we were in the area and we, erm, caught your scent, so to speak.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it’s just me and Cougar.”

“Who the fuck is Cougar, soldier?”

There’s another pregnant pause. Roque digs his claws – nails, _nails_ \- into his thighs to keep himself from rattling apart even as his blood pressure rises until he can hear the blood rushing in his ears.

“You’ve met my amazing pet bird, right? That’s Cougs. That’s totally Cougs, who is a bird, who happens to be, uhm, trained for this kind of mission and, uhm,…”

As far as crappy excuses for inexplicable appearances of animals go, this one is so damn bad, even Roque, three days past sanity, winces.

“He’s a fucking shifter,” Clay barks, just to get it over with.

Silence. Then. “Whew, that’s like, an enormous relief right there, because I had no idea how to explain the naked Mexican that’s sort of integral to this plan and, ah, I’m assuming you guys, actually, you know, _aren’t_? Guys, that is, as in human. As in, not shifters. You are, right? Shifters? Because, wow, totally talking out of school here if you weren’t, but you’re the Losers, right, and we’ve heard stories, you wouldn’t believe it, and I’ve been saying, Cougs, my friend, that sounds almost as amazing as you and me, I need to meet those guys, I bet you fifty bucks they shift and…”

The eagle – Cougar, apparently, and isn’t that some class A irony right there – caws indignantly. Jensen makes a sound over the phone. 

“Okay. So maybe he bet me fifty bucks, but I’m the one that had the theory first, just ask him, not that he’s going to tell you and…”

If that kid doesn’t stop talking this instant, Roque is going to explode, quite literally.

“ _SOLDIER_!!!”

“…Yes?”

“What. Is. The. Plan?”

Cougar makes another annoyed sound, _at Clay_ , and then takes flight, disappearing into the darkness.

“Yeah, alright. Plan. Cougs is going to bring you some binary in just a moment, which, can any of you guys handle that shit? Because I kind of tweaked it a bit, and it packs a teensy-weensy more of a punch that is usual… in dynamite. So.”

“I can do it,” Pooch volunteers. He’s still naked. Roque bites his lip until it bleeds and counts his heartbeat by the throbbing in his head.

“Gr-eat. Binary. On the outside wall. I’ll plant some nice, little bombs on the other side of the complex in a moment, you use the binary as soon as they go off. Fifth floor is a bit of a drop, I know, but this is a rescue mission, so suck it up, okay, and then straight ahead and you better shift the fuck out of your skin into whatever you guys turn into because we’ve got a long trip ahead of us and a narrow window to make it in. Cougs is gonna show you a way out of the compound and, uhm, I’ll be the MFC at the treeline. Questions? Sir?”

Clay looks like yes, he has a whole damn lot of questions, starting with _how can you be this annoying and still be alive_ and ending with _have you ever heard of the chain of fucking command, boy?_

What he does ask is, “MFC?”

Roque can _hear_ the kid smirk. “That’d be _Mother Fucking Cat_ , Colonel.”

Cheeky little shit hangs up before Clay can ask anything else. A moment later, as promised, the eagle drops a few bottles of chemical _boom_ through the bars and then disappears for parts unknown. Probably getting his feathery ass out of the line of fire. 

Pooch picks up the bottles, turns them over in his hand and finds handwritten labels on them. He reads them through quickly, not caring that it’s pitch black night, and then looks at Clay. “Boss? Whoever this maniac is, this is pretty damn impressive.”

Clay get s a speculative look on his face and it takes all of Roque’s self control to raise his hand, point at his alpha and growl, “Don’t even think about it, Clay.”

Because he knows Clay, and he knows that look, the one that says, _shifters, think on their feet, do what needs doing, are good at their job, no respect for anything, yes, **want**_.

He was all over Pooch like a kid with a new toy and Roque didn’t want Pooch either, but he didn’t get a say. The kid turned out okay, yes, but this guy? He’s _insane_ , Roque doesn’t need to meet him face to face to know that. They are not keeping him. And neither are they keeping the other guy that’s named after a cat and actually turns into a bird and apparently puts up with the mouthy fucker in the forest. That’s its own brand of insanity, right there.

Five minutes later, the promised distraction goes off. But instead of the _bang, bang, bang_ they expect, it’s more of a _doom, doom, doom_.

Roque’s teeth rattle in his skull, for fuck’s sake, and he slips again. Clay looks at him, narrow-eyed, while Pooch plays with his chemistry set. “Can you change?”

A bearing of teeth is all the answer they give. 

“Can you move afterwards?”

They’ll have to, won’t they? 

“Ten seconds, boys,” Pooch announces, steps back from the wall and shifts down into a hundred and sixty pounds of frustrated hyena. Clay strips out of his clothes fast enough to rip most of them and then he, too, is on all fours.

Roque doesn’t have time to shift now, to break and rearrange bones, shift muscle and tear sinew. Later, later, not now. Won’t be any use if they do it now. 

They all crowd against the wall opposite of their soon-to-be exit route and then there’s a flash and a bit of a bang and Roque kicks out the remaining wall, looks down. Five floors, straight drop onto packed soil. 

Well, shit. 

He sets his jaw and leaps.

Two sets of paws hit the ground of either side of him and split second after he lands and then the eagle’s back, calling for them to follow. So they do. They take off at the fast, loping run so typical for canines, the eagle circling above their heads. 

The five hundred yards or so to the tree line don’t take more than a handful of seconds. Not when there’s no-one to hide from and nothing to lose. They hit the trees at a dead run, only to brake hard enough to send dirt flying, when a shadow detaches from a low branch and lands silently in front of them with a toothy, distinctly human grin on its face.

The motormouth turns into a panther. Well, shit. 

The bird lands on the cat’s back and from the way the cat absolutely _doesn’t_ react, that happens a lot and how the hell does that work out without feathers and fur flying?

Clay takes a step forward, measured, posing. The cat inclines its head, bends in the legs a little. It’s not the belly-up-neck-bared the wolf wants, but it’ll do. The eagle just flings itself up into the trees, taking itself out of the equation entirely.

Clay gives a short growl and a throw of his head. It’s the _go_ sign. He and Pooch take off and Roque makes to follow, still on two legs. There’s still not enough time and he’s more useful like this than shifted and dead on his feet.

The panther gives a slow, measured look from improbably blue eyes and then puts itself in his way. 

They snarls, the cat snarls back. It sounds more impressive from an animal throat. They shifts to one side, the cat follows. The wolf howls. To the other side, the cat follows. They growl, clench their fists. Wherever they go, the cat’s already there, snarling and shoving at them, blocking them, pissing them off. But they’re human and that means they have neither teeth now claws to fight. The wolf flings himself against the walls and rages. They feint left, move right, get past the panther at last. Or at least they think they do, until it snaps at their fucking heels, teeth catching their pant leg, shredding it. They feel blood run down their calf, spin around and into a crouch, eyes bleeding to yellow, to animal, to rage. 

They don’t notice their nails harden into claws, don’t notice the rest of the pack watching from a short distance. All they know is the enemy in front of them, the burn of an injury and the fury of being locked up like a fucking _dog_ for the past five days and they want to _rip_ and _tear_ and _break_ and _kill_ and then the cat shifts its weight backwards and lunges and they _move_ , claws aimed at the neck and – 

\- Roque lands on four paws, skidding in the dirt, and has no idea what just happened. He spins to face the cat again, only to find it trotting away, toward alpha, throwing a kitty grin over its shoulder like this was all a game.

Pooch makes a huffing sound that’s far too close to laughter and Roque finally realizes that he just _shifted_.

That little shit of a motormouth _cat_ just made him do something not even Clay has managed in all the years he’s tried. He pissed and already insane Roque off enough to get him to stop _thinking_ and just _do_. 

Roque shakes off the confusion and surprise and rage as well as he can and starts following the others, away from the acrid smell of fire and humans. 

He just shifted.

And it didn’t hurt. Clay noses at his side, Pooch whuffs and the cat mewls smugly when he reaches them.

He’s going to kill the kid.

+

Clay, of course, decides to keep them and Roque never actually does kill Jensen, even though he talks too fucking much, has no concept of tact or decency or privacy or even sanity and drives everyone up the fucking wall. 

Thing is, from that day in the jungle on, Jensen’s always sort of there when Roque needs to explode at someone, prodding and poking until the wolf cuts loose and gets it out of his system. 

He’s the one that pulls Roque aside when that Aisha bitch struts past him like she owns them all because she fucks the alpha. He’s the one that gets Roque to scream until he’s hoarse after Miami and then helps him drink his way back to sanity. 

He’s the one that keeps Roque together and Cougar from going too quiet and Pooch from getting too lonely and Clay from getting too big a head. 

And all the while he never stops fucking talking.

+

So Clay keeps him and Roque doesn’t kill him.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. 

+


End file.
